[dropcap1 variation=”purple”]M[\/dropcap1]y Grandmother loves to give me self-care tips. Her basic premise is that the only person who can take care of you the right way is you; you can\u2019t wait on your mama, daddy, sister, brother or grandmother to do it for you.<\/p>\n
Her favorite to dish-out is this one: \u201cDon\u2019t tell anybody how much money you make or how much money you have. Telling people how much money you makes invites them into your household, tells them how far they can dig into your pockets and helps them dictate how you spend your money.\u201d Of course she quickly follows up by asking, \u201cHow much money do you make?\u201d<\/p>\n
We live in a society that tells us in words that it is more virtuous to always place your brother ahead of yourself, but also teaches us that only the strongest survive, and that you must be able to fend for yourself. Where we are taught the value of hard work and doing things for you<\/em>, yet the wheels of government and commerce don\u2019t turn properly without someone depending on or owing something to another. It is in this climate that the words of black, lesbian poet, Audre Lorde, ring their truest meaning.<\/p>\n [pullquote3 quotes=”true” align=”center” variation=”purple”]Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self \u2013preservation and that is an act of political warfare. ~Audre Lorde[\/pullquote3]<\/p>\n As a student of the civil rights movement, the organization that I revered the most was the Original Black Panther Party<\/a>. I grew up in Richmond, CA, next door to the their home base of Oakland, and my first encounter with the BPP occurred on the day of Huey Newton<\/a>\u2019s death.<\/p>\n I was 10 years old, on a staycation at a local amusement park. My family and I were having breakfast when the news flash came on that Huey had been murdered. The newscaster went on to recount the Panther\u2019s role in the civil rights struggle, complete with words like \u201cnotorious\u201d, \u201cgun-toting\u201d, \u201csubversive\u201d, and every other negative word they could think of to drive the point home that we’d all finally been released from the “public nuisance”\u00a0J Edgar Hoover had never been able to quite rid the country of<\/a>.\u00a0I made it my business, that day, to learn as much as I could about Huey and the Black Panthers.<\/p>\n To this day it, is still so shocking to me that so many negative words were attached to the Black Panthers for having the gall to love their community enough to make it their job<\/em> to protect it. Imagine that. The original BPP believed it was their job to make sure children had food to eat, were properly tested for diseases, had affordable housing, and so on<\/a>. They also believed it was their job to educate members of the black community on their rights, and arm them with resources that would enable them to thrive in America.<\/p>\n